NVIDIA has just announced that its Project SHIELD game console will officially be called NVIDIA Shield. That’s not a total surprise, but for those who liked the name will be glad to know that it will stay. More importantly, the company has finally revealed the price for this console: $349. Those who have signed up for the notification on shield.nvidia.com will be able to pre-order right away and everybody else will be able to place orders next Monday at the following outlets: Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center and Canada Computers. It’s apparently possible to register to the notification list today, and it should give you access to the pre-orders. NVIDIA will start shipping the SHIELD console in “late June”, according to NVIDIA.
The final product looks pretty much like what was shown at CES, and you can go to our NVIDIA SHIELD review to refresh your memory. The final version has better trigger buttons and D-pad, thanks to design tweaks, but that’s about it.
NVIDIA is in the process of testing games with the final hardware, and you can expect to hear about SHIELD/Tegra 4 titles at E3 next month, but basically Android and PC games that support game controllers should work with SHIELD. Keep in mind that PC streaming will require a GeForce 650 (and above) and the GeForce Experience client.
At $349, the price is lower than the “smartphone price point” that has often been hinted before, but it is no pocket change either. The price of the latest tech, I suppose. Is that what you expected? Let us know.
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